There are two good books written about myths as it relates to entrepreneurship. One is The E‑Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. The other is The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun. If you have not read them, read them. If you wonder about entrepreneurs and the startups they create, you might think they were just lucky or born to be an entrepreneur. In fact, even though the academic debate rages on about whether entrepreneurs are born or made, the truth is, anyone can be an entrepreneur. Don’t believe it? Who do you think started that company you are working at now? The truth is anyone can be an entrepreneur.

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Most cities want to become more innovative, but how do you create an environment where that actually happens?

Silicon Valley is known for its spirit of innovation. Home to many of the world’s leading technology companies, the drive to innovate runs in the region’s veins. Leaders of five enterprising cities in the region offered tips to replicate their success. 1. Ping pong tables aren’t innovation Too often when people try to replicate the culture of innovation that they see in start-ups, they focus on the superficial. They try to replicate the appearance of the work environment, but don’t actually change the way that work is done.

Startup cultures are characterized as being creative, passionate, innovative, and agile. Every employee in a startup is responsible for the success of their project and works in multiple lanes to ensure that success. They’re invested emotionally and are motivated to take on any responsibility they can to succeed. These are attractive characteristics that motivate some companies to embed that culture within their own to help raise their success bar.

For much of the last 30 years, organizations have agonized about whether they should centralize or decentralize their operations. But today that debate is increasingly moot. Every organization is essentially a distributed one, with many different options for getting work done. Our ability to “liberate” work from the organization and distribute it to its most optimal provider — anywhere in the world — is creating a new set of requirements for leaders.

By Tom Still

MADISON, Wis. – With the carnage of World War I just over, a popular 1919 song was “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)?” The lyrics captured the worry that American soldiers who had grown up on farms or in small towns would not return to country life after seeing the bright lights of Paris.

One hundred years later, those same lyrics apply – perhaps with a rock or hip-hop beat.

In Wisconsin and across America, the decades-long march of people from rural settings to urban centers continues. The shift comes with justified worries about rural economies, healthcare delivery, basic infrastructure, schools and culture. The question is: What can stabilize rural communities in Wisconsin and elsewhere?

Most business mentors tell me that the single biggest problem they have to deal with in small companies is the lack of open, honest, and effective communication, both from the top down and from the bottom up. Some entrepreneurs forget that talking is not communicating. Fortunately these skills can be learned, and the barriers to communication can be overcome one by one.

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Venture funding for digital health companies around the world reached an all-time high in the first half of 2019, topping $5 billion, according to a new Mercom Capital Group report.

Here are three key findings from the report, which comprises fundraising information about more than 600 companies and investors:

1. Digital health funding totaled $5.1 billion in the first six months of the year; $3.1 billion was raised in the second quarter alone. The first half funding represents a slight increase from the $4.9 billion raised in the first six months of 2018, and is the highest amount of venture funding raised in the first half of any year so far.

The growing number of private biopharma and diagnostic/therapeutic technology company financings completed in recent months masks an overall year-over-year decrease in the total value of those deals.

A look at the just-released 2Q 2019 PitchBook National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Venture Monitor report detailing January–June 2019 activity showed a total $8.3 billion in 404 deals took place in the “pharma & biotech” sector. That’s a 14% drop in value from the $9.67 billion recorded during the first half of 2018, though the number of deals rose year-over-year from 317 in the first half of last year.

The democratization of innovation over the last decade -- as the organizational concept of innovation has spread from top-down to shared ownership -- is mirrored in a growing body of academic research exploring the impact of individual and team-based creativity on macro-level innovation initiatives. One oft-cited study published in the Journal of Management frames the relationship like this: “Considerable evidence now suggests that employee creativity can substantially contribute to organizational innovation, effectiveness and survival.”

You spend a lot of time at work. A 40-hour workweek (plus commute) takes up most of the time you’re awake each day. That is a lot of time to spend doing something that you don’t like.

When you hate your job, that provides a strong incentive to leave. But, not everyone has the option to make such a significant change. You may be in a region where the job you have is the only one that fits your skill set. You might need the income associated with your job and cannot afford to switch firms. Or you may need other perks that come with your job, like childcare or a flexible schedule, that would be hard to get elsewhere.

Foreign Ph.D.s trained at U.S. universities are less likely than their American counterparts to work in start-up companies, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study is based on a survey of 2,324 foreign and American doctoral degree holders who studied STEM fields at U.S. research universities. Among Ph.D.s whose first job is in industrial research and development, just 6.8 percent of foreign Ph.D.s work in a start-up, compared to 15.8 percent of U.S. Ph.D.s. Foreign Ph.D.s are as likely as American Ph.D.s to apply for and receive offers for start-up jobs but are 56 percent less likely to work at a start-up upon receiving an offer.

If you want to be an executive, billionaire, or US president, it's a good idea to go to Harvard Business School.

Harvard offered the world's first master's in business administration program in 1908, and the Harvard MBA has since been a hallmark of the elite, with George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Michael Bloomberg all earning the degree.

Image: Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund

Back when YC was getting started about 10 years ago, Paul Graham wrote some essays that predicted the way startup fundraising would change in the next decade – accurately, it turns out. In short, Paul Graham predicted that there would be way more startups, that they’d be cheaper to start, that new kinds of investors would fund them, that founders would be more technical, and that founders would keep control of their companies. All of those seem to have come true.

Innovation is the core activity of human evolution to change the environment, reach high performance, and make collective progress.

Nowadays, with rapid changes and fierce competition, innovation is no longer a “nice to have,” but a “must have” competency for long-term business success. The digital era upon us is the age of innovation. Highly innovative digital organizations, no matter how large or small, are dynamic and flexible, and they focus on solving problems creatively and unleashing business potential relentlessly.

Researchers from London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) and Johannesburg’s Wits University have identified a new species of dinosaur that has been hiding in a collection in Johannesburg for more than 30 years.

Yes, it was exhumed in 1978, but was believed to be “misidentified”. Only recently have researchers properly identified and classified the sample as a separate species.

The maverick needs a rebrand. The term, usually defined as someone who is independent or unorthodox, can carry negative connotations that imply complication, contrariness, and chaos. In a society in which echo chambers create siloed workforces, where algorithms and the march of artificial intelligence could threaten to inhibit human creativity, talented freethinkers need to be cherished, or they will walk away.

This year at least 31,000 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of their body, such as bones and lymph nodes. Most of them will be treated by highly skilled and experienced oncologists, who have access to 52 drugs approved to treat this condition. Yet eventually more than three quarters of these men will succumb to their illness.

BENGALURU: For a little over a decade, venture capital (VC) investors, who back startups during the toughest of times, infused nearly $48 billion in young Indian companies. But during this period, exits, which helps venture capitalists (VCs) get decent returns on their investments, have been few and far between, broadly for three reasons.

One, lack of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Two, fewer secondary sales. Three, regulations do not permit listing of loss-making companies.

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For Fast Company‘s inaugural Best Workplaces for Innovators list, we set out to find companies that empower all employees—not just top executives, scientists, or coders—to create new products, improve operations, and take risks. We searched for businesses where innovation isn’t just a buzzword but a part of the value system and culture.

Warren Buffett once said, “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

In August of 2007, I had a meeting with the CEO one of the largest U.S. banks. At the time, the initial rumblings of the bank crisis, and the underpinnings of the great recession to follow, were starting to make headlines.